Could an argument be made for visitors to view museum objects solely online? The case was put by the director of the British Museum (BM), Neil MacGregor, in his anniversary lecture last month to mark the 250th year since it opened to the public.
In Public Benefit & Utility: Persons Native and Foreign, MacGregor reiterated his justification for the BM's status as a world museum - drawing on the owner of the founding collections Hans Sloane's own passion for collecting the world and making it freely available to those who could access it at an address in 18th-century Chelsea.
MacGregor pointed out that those who can't get to the UK today can see and study the collections online. And he said they would get an even better view of an object, painting or print than in front of the real thing at the BM, where they would have to contend with crowds of other visitors. So would it be fair to say that the "natives" should also be content with virtual access? Of course not.
The BM is a great space and resource and there really is little alternative to wondering through galleries that are full of historical objects, participating in handling sessions and being wowed by, for instance, the 16th-century commemorative head of a Queen Mother of Benin and imagining the crafter and his culture.
Interestingly, in MacGregor's lecture, for the first time I heard the BM address head on the question of the disputed Benin Bronzes.
MacGregor made a desperate and convoluted attempt to justify the BM's retention of the phenomenal bronzes of Benin. Citing the existence of trading links in copper between the Benin people and Europeans, he argued that if the BM could prove that traded copper was melted down to make the brass plaques, then it has a right to the objects.
The glaring fact of the seizure of the bronzes by the British military in an 1897 raid is enough to send them back. But given that copper was already used as currency before the Europeans arrived, the BM has a difficult job on its hands to prove its right of retention.
In Public Benefit & Utility: Persons Native and Foreign, MacGregor reiterated his justification for the BM's status as a world museum - drawing on the owner of the founding collections Hans Sloane's own passion for collecting the world and making it freely available to those who could access it at an address in 18th-century Chelsea.
MacGregor pointed out that those who can't get to the UK today can see and study the collections online. And he said they would get an even better view of an object, painting or print than in front of the real thing at the BM, where they would have to contend with crowds of other visitors. So would it be fair to say that the "natives" should also be content with virtual access? Of course not.
The BM is a great space and resource and there really is little alternative to wondering through galleries that are full of historical objects, participating in handling sessions and being wowed by, for instance, the 16th-century commemorative head of a Queen Mother of Benin and imagining the crafter and his culture.
Interestingly, in MacGregor's lecture, for the first time I heard the BM address head on the question of the disputed Benin Bronzes.
MacGregor made a desperate and convoluted attempt to justify the BM's retention of the phenomenal bronzes of Benin. Citing the existence of trading links in copper between the Benin people and Europeans, he argued that if the BM could prove that traded copper was melted down to make the brass plaques, then it has a right to the objects.
The glaring fact of the seizure of the bronzes by the British military in an 1897 raid is enough to send them back. But given that copper was already used as currency before the Europeans arrived, the BM has a difficult job on its hands to prove its right of retention.
